Crash (34 page)

Jackson rips off his glasses and his eyes meet mine. “I need more power. I need to reach them.”

Not just the humans. He wants to reach the Drau, too.

He stares at me, his expression tortured. “I need you, Miki. It's all I can think to do.”

I know what he's asking. He needs me to trust him, to amp up his signal, to give him my energy to supplement his own. He almost reached them, almost made them listen. With my help . . .

An image forms clear and sharp in my mind: Lizzie, her eyes staring blank and sightless, her con red. He's showing me what he saw the day he killed her. He's showing me the risks.

He doesn't know if he'll be able to stop.

But if I don't help him, all is lost.

He holds his hand out to me. I take it and he pulls me up beside him on the wall, his eyes locked on mine.

He doesn't say it, not out loud or in my thoughts, but I know what he's asking.
Trust me. Trust me. Help me trust
myself. I don't see another way.

I hold his gaze. I feel the jolt of our connection, followed by pain, like my insides are being pulled out through my pupils. I've felt this before, the first time I ever looked in a Drau's eyes. I remember the agony. That memory consolidates with the reality of my right now, the agony ripping me apart.

It wasn't like this in Detroit when I shared my energy with Jackson to keep him alive. It wasn't painful, not like this. Agony wrenches my thoughts from any coherent track. All I know is pain. So much pain. And cold. I'm so cold.

I can't feel my feet, my hands. I can't feel my legs. They collapse from underneath me and I stay upright only thanks to Jackson's arm around my waist. I'm bent back in a bow, and he's hunched over me, like we're a couple on TV doing the tango. And I am fading away, weaker . . . weaker . . .

He jerks his gaze from mine.

The pain recedes.

“Did it work?” I croak.

He bows his head, shoulders slumped.

He failed. We failed.

I'm so weak I can't even turn my head to look. I don't need to. I can hear the screams of the wounded, the dying. I feel the terror hanging in the air like smoke and the gray fog of my depression oozing into my thoughts.

They're dying. They're all dying.

All of them.

MomSofuGramDadCarlyRichelleLuka

I didn't stop it.

I couldn't stop it.

In the end, everything's out of my control.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“YOU NEED TO TAKE MORE,” I WHISPER, SOUNDLESS, THE words carrying from my thoughts to Jackson's.

“It will kill you.”

“It won't. You won't.”

Still he hesitates.

“It isn't just about me. You need to be strong enough to reach them.
We
need to reach them, make them stop fighting, make them listen. If we don't, we all die anyway.”

“I—”

“Steer the nightmare, Jackson.”

I stare into his eyes. Again, the connection jolts between us, like a rope connecting me to him, pulled taut. All I see are his eyes. His mercury eyes. Moving. Dancing. No . . . I'm the one moving. Shaking. Cold, so cold.

He takes my energy and uses it to boost his signal as he broadcasts his demand to
stop, just stop
. To remember what we told them.

I'm floating away. Almost gone.

I remember dreaming about Sofu. About Lizzie, running beside me.

Lizzie, with her green, green eyes. Lizzie, who the Drau saved because they saw the energy exchange between her and Jackson.

I think about that, my brain soft and fuzzy.

Exchange. Exchange.

The Drau can kill by sucking all our energy, leaving us a dried husk.

But they thought Lizzie was worth saving.

I'm missing something here. What am I missing?

Exchange. Two ways.

Give and take.

With a gasp, I focus on Jackson's eyes, his mercury eyes; they swirl with a million shades of gray, so beautiful. I don't fight, I don't struggle. I let energy flow from me to him and then I catch the tide as it ebbs, coming back to me.

Two ways.

My energy flows to him and his to me, and together we are so much stronger than either of us alone. We share and in sharing make it bigger, stronger, and this time when Jackson pulses his thoughts to the crowd, they go loud and wide.

Everything goes dead quiet.

He broadcasts images, thoughts, emotions outward. A powerful signal, like he's the electric guitar and I'm the amplifier, taking the signal in one form and putting it into another. Making it loud and clear enough for everyone to hear.

Drau and human alike see what he sees, know what he knows about the Committee, the battles, Lizzie, the plan.

And below us, they stop, just stop. No one moves. No one speaks.

I feel cold pins at the base of my skull, at my temples. The Committee, trying to get in. Not just into my head, into everyone's.

Together, Jackson and I will them away, will a barrier between the Committee's thoughts and ours, between their thoughts and those of everyone out there.

Slowly, Jackson straightens, pulling me upright with him, his eyes never leaving mine. The energy flows between us still, softer, gentler. And then the connection snaps.

I stare out at the crowd below and see Lien and Kendra and Tyrone. Tyrone scoops Kendra onto his shoulders so she can be seen above the crowd. With a yell, she lifts her weapon cylinder above her head. Eyes turn to her, heads swivel. She throws her weapon down and it clatters on the ground. Lien follows her lead, and then Tyrone.

For a long second, no one says a word. Then a boy next to Tyrone tosses down his weapon, and a girl next to him
does the same, and then a girl next to her.

“We won,” I say. We won this battle, this small battle in a massive war. Overcome with emotion, I close my eyes and let the enormity of what we've accomplished flow through me.

And when I open my eyes again, we're alone. Almost all alone. No humans. No Drau. No tiers of cloaked figures.

Just the Committee of three, floating on their suspended shelf, which sinks from high above until it's level with us. As one, their faces turn to us, and they are the faces of nightmares; what I see is impossible to process, impossible to describe. My brain can't understand what they are.

“We should not have created you. You are flawed. A mistake,” they say, their voices raking talons along my nerves, but somehow, I can take it, somehow it doesn't break me, doesn't even bend me, and I realize it's because of Jackson, because of the energy we shared. He's always been able to tolerate this direct mind-to-mind communication better than me. That ability's been transferred now.

“Am I alone a mistake, or all your human progeny?” I ask, but in the back of my mind is what Lizzie told me, that the Committee is omniscient. Or did she say
almost
omniscient? There's a huge difference there. Because omniscient beings don't make mistakes.

Will they kill us now? Can they wipe out our existence with the wave of a hand?

“Where are they? All the kids who were here?” Jackson demands.

“You will tell us.” Do I sense frustration in their words? Are they even capable of that emotion? “We did not remove them.”

I blink, confused, and then I'm not. They want us to tell them where all those kids went, where the Drau went, because they don't know. They didn't send them off with a wave of their hands.

Lizzie,
Jackson says straight into my thoughts.

She saved them. She got them out. And the Committee is anything but pleased.

I guess they are capable of some emotion, because in this moment I can feel their rage.

“You are to blame, Miki Jones. Without you, there would have been no destruction.”

I'm not sure why they're singling me out, but that isn't the question that matters right now. “No destruction? What about all the lives you stole? For nothing more than entertainment. What about all the families who lost their children to your stupid game? And not just humans. Other species, all across the universe, for millennia. With your vast resources and knowledge, this is the best you can do? Pitting kids against each other in battles to the death while you watch and cheer?”

“There is honor in playing well. Dying well.”

“There's honor in living well,” Jackson grates out. “And
yeah, honor in dying well, if you're fighting for something that matters.”

“You cannot stop us.”

They don't say that as a challenge. They aren't rubbing it in. They're stating a fact. We can't stop them.

“We can try. We can fight,” Jackson says. “There's honor in that.”

“There is,” Lizzie says, materializing beside us, a team of ten Drau with her.

I don't know if the Committee is capable of being startled, but I can definitely sense that they're thrown off by this development.

“You were terminated, Elizabeth Tate. You are out of order. You have no place in this dimension. Return from whence you came.”

She shakes her head. “See, that's the thing about killing me off. It kind of negates any hold you have over me. And I may be dead in my world, my dimension, but not in others. We”—she looks at her team of Drau, standing sentinel at her back—“will stand against you. And you know the Drau have technological aptitude that will give you a run for your money.”

If I were four, I'd take this opportunity to stick my tongue out, waggle my fingers against my nose, and say, “Nah-nah.” But I'm not four, so I gloat silently instead.

A second of silence stretches uncomfortably long. “We have studied human emotion. You will wish your sibling to
remain viable. This is a hold we maintain.”

I gasp at the threat against Jackson. Lizzie squeezes my fingers, but doesn't answer them.

The base of my skull prickles. My temples pound. The sensation of needles prodding at my brain sends shivers crawling down my spine. They're trying to get in, to steal my thoughts and put theirs inside my head. I draw on emotion, choosing hope, building a wall to keep them out, fighting, fighting. They're so strong.

Jackson cries out and clutches his abdomen. I scream as blood gushes between his fingers, hitting the floor in fat red drops. I leap for him, horrified, terrified, and he pulls his hands away, loops of his intestines tumbling out from a gash that splits him from ribs to pubic bone. He lifts his head and stares at me, and as I look at him, I see Jackson, from the corner of my eye, standing off to the side, screaming my name. I see his lips form words, but can't hear a sound.

They're tricking me. Playing me. Trying to mess with my mind.

I blink and there's no blood. No intestines. Just Lizzie on one side of me, Jackson on the other, and a phalanx of Drau at our backs. I shut the Committee out and I didn't let depression in. Another victory.

“You have destroyed centuries of work in a millisecond,” the Committee says. “We will begin anew.”

The implicit threat in those words sickens me. Do they mean to terminate all the kids seeded with their DNA? To
start again here on Earth? Or elsewhere? Some other galaxy, some other universe?

“We know how to counter your hold,” Lizzie says. “We will fight you. We will win. As long as it takes. I'm not restricted to this dimension. I can move anywhere you move, go anywhere you go. We will follow you to every new version of the game you seed. We will fight you. And even if it takes millennia, we will win.”

“You could build, but you choose to destroy,” I say. “You could save entire galaxies, do wonderful things for species everywhere.”

“We may not interfere. We may not influence the development of any sentient being. These are rules we put in place for the safety of all.”

“That makes no sense. You alter our DNA. You create hybrid species. What do you call that if it isn't interfering?” I ask at the same time Lizzie says, “You can't interfere in a positive way, but you can kill kids in a game?”

“We do not kill. They kill. We watch. We are eternal. You are not.”

“So you're saying we can't understand what it's like to be you?” Jackson asks. “Poor you, who lives forever.”

“It is a difficulty.” Clearly they can't understand sarcasm. “And you are mistaken, Elizabeth Tate. You said you will win, if it takes millennia. You do not have time of that nature. Only we, the Committee, are eternal.”

“Yeah. Wrong. I do have millennia. I am the collective consciousness of Elizabeth Tate, neither alive nor dead.”
Beside me, Jackson tenses at her words. Not that what she's saying is a surprise, but hearing it confirmed has to be tough on him. She's Lizzie, but not. I can't imagine how he feels about that. “I can't go back to my world, my real world, but I can go forward, and I intend to fight you every step of the way.”